SUNDAY WEEKLY ZOOM - 12:30 PM EDT - Ancient Text Study: De Rerum Natura by Lucretius -- Meeting is open to Level 03 members and above -- Read the agenda for December 14, 2025 by clicking here.
As for me, I'm off to the gym to work off my Thanksgiving feast. Bottoms up!
Count your blessings friend. Not only did we have a big dinner yesterday, we have a birthday today. And I'm out of town with family for the week. All my efforts over the last months were for nothing! 
Display MoreIs there is some theoretical barrier or insuperable obstacle that will always be impossible to overcome no matter what the technology?
I think so. The whole premise seems to me to be akin to "stealing someone's soul" simply dressed up in techno-babble and wishful thinking. The idea that one could "upload" one's consciousness to a computer is based on the idea that a person's being is reducible to some kind of (let's say Aristotelian) essence, usually thought of as some kind of electrical signal that can be read and copied into some kind of a computer-like machine. Or think of a Star Trek transporter that "reads" the individual's construction, breaks it down into a signal, and reconstitutes that person at a distance. For one thing there, it's not necessarily the same "person." See this video:
The video also brings up the idea of "What is consciousness?" Which is really what this question of uploading for immortality purposes hinges on. To upload one's consciousness means we have to define consciousness itself. Good luck with that! One intriguing idea is the embodied cognition theory:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embodied_cognition?wprov=sfla1
Nevertheless, as Epicureans, we insist the mind and body depend on each other. The mind does not exist independent of the body and both die together. In light of this, the mind cannot exist separate from the body, so the mind (our essence) is not able to be uploaded or separated from the body. There's no "me" without my body and mind working together. Giving into the idea of some future technology being able to do this can be fun, but ultimately it's dangerous to our life here and now because it literally denigrates this physical flesh as lesser than some fanciful pure mental existence that is somehow better than our current way of living. That smacks of heaven-talk and a better next world which is anathema to Epicurean philosophy.
I can see your point. I don't have much to argue about. However, I think you oversimplify the mind-body idea.
Our current understanding of the mind is that it is just brain activity. Something akin to a computer program (or an analog circuit if you're more familiar with electronics). It seems that our experience is directly produced by neural activity. So, science indicates that our mind specifically is the electrical activity in our body (our brain more specifically). That's what we call our "conscious experience." It's electrical activity. Computation maybe.
So, yes, we ARE our body, just a specific part of it. We don't die or stop experiencing when we lose our foot, but we do die and stop experiencing when we lose our brain.
To say that brain uploading is possible is not a denial of the inherently materialistic nature of consciousness, rather it's an embrace of the idea. If consciousness or experience is material, than through proper interfacing with a computer that eventually replicates the brain activity entirely, the same individual who once experienced their existence in a body of flesh could eventually experience it in a body of silicon. Just like how the same computer program that once ran on a clockwork computer can be made to run on an electronic one.
My first thought would be that since there is nothing divine or non-natural about the human mind, this is probably going to happen in the future and is definitely something to think about.
I would see it is as the expected way forward and that we should bring to bear on the opportunities and issues all our standard methods of analysis to try to get it right.
I've never thought that Epicurus has anything bad to say about variety or the desirabilty of life extension. Yes it's true that life doesn't get "better" simply by being longer, and we need not regret that at least for our present technology death at no more than about 100 years is the natural result of the way things currently are.
But Epicurus clearly says that "life is desirable" in the letter to Menoeceus so I would not hesitate to take the opportunity to live longer where it appeared to me that the pleasure would outweigh the pain.
Yeah, I think instinct is what it all boils down to. I wouldn't worry about trying to justify it. If you have to opportunity to extend your life, and your instincts drive you to do that, then go for it. At the very least, it'll spare you the pain from the process of dying.
Seeing the advances in AI and robotics right now, it seems increasingly believable that by the end of the century, we may be able to leave our human bodies and continue our existence in man-made devices and machinery, and these may not only allow us to continue our existence but also inhabit better "bodies" than our biological ones. Stronger, easier to maintain or alter, less fragile, etc...
Pop culture makes this look scary, but I think this could have the potential to give us far better lives. I'm curious what others here think about the idea, though. What's the Epicurean view of transhumanism?
